She ran past me and out the kitchen. I stood smelling the soft air and listening to the coffee gurgling behind me. I imagined myself standing at the base of a volcano listening to the roar of molten lava come driving down a mountain. And then the bubbling red lava became blood exploding from a busted vein. I got up and shut the coffeemaker down.
MY MOTHER was standing on the front porch of her townhouse in Bloomfield, New Jersey, when I swerved around the park twenty yards away. I slowed down as two chipmunks in the middle of the road rose up on their hind legs as if to protest my disturbing their habitat. When the Volvo got a few feet away, they separated to opposite sides, wiggling their tails.
Wearing an oversized New Jersey Devils jacket over black jeans, her silver-blond hair bound into a ponytail, my mother began walking to the car even before I parked behind hers in the driveway. She stood waiting for me to kill the engine, the smile on her face as bright as a New York night.
“Hello, Carmen,” she said, after I’d rolled down my window.
Other than my father and my sister, Melanie, my mother was the only person who still called me Carmen, the name she gave me at birth. I changed my name from Carmen Blades to Blades Overstreet before I went into the Marines. Can you imagine a young black kid from Brooklyn going into the Marines with a name like Carmen Blades?
I couldn’t either.
I opened my door and felt a smile creep across my face like a lazy larva. My face has always been tea leaves to my soul in my mother’s eyes, and she must’ve read pain the minute she saw my smile shrivel up because hers evaporated just as quickly and the expression on her face became solemn.
“What’s the matter, Carmen?”
I stepped out of the car. “Who said anything’s the matter?”
Chesney had unbuckled her seat belt and now was skidding across the driver’s seat to get out of the car. My mother bent to catch her as she tumbled outside. “What’s my sweet granddaughter been up to?” she said.
Chesney threw arms around my mother’s neck. “Where’s my present?”
My mother beamed, lifting Chez into the air.
“You better be careful. She’s a little big for that,” I said.
“Well, I was deprived when she was a baby so I’ll take my chances.”
After a few moments of straining to keep Chesney aloft my mother settled her on the ground and with a groan and a grin, hobbled over to me, holding Chesney by the hand. “You want breakfast?”
“I gotta get back to New York. Is Jason asleep?”
“He’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“Virginia.”
I folded my hands into my pockets. The last thing I needed now was a Jason crisis.
“Don’t worry,” my mother said. “He’s gone to see his father who’s working on a project for the Navy.”
“I’ll be back to pick her up tomorrow,” I said.
“You still didn’t tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I don’t want to get into it right now, Mom.”
“His friend died,” Chesney chirped.
My mother looked at me with a reproachful curl of her lip, but her eyes were sympathetic, reminding me of when I was seventeen and I lied to her about what my girlfriend and I did after our prom. That time, after she found out we had stayed in a hotel room in Manhattan, she lectured me for hours about what makes a man a man.
She walked over and hugged me, riffling her fingers through my hair. I closed my eyes and inhaled the fresh-snow smell of her hair. At six-one, I towered above her. When I opened my eyes I was looking down at her scalp. Her hair was beginning to thin out at the top and I could see the white roots.
My mother released me and stepped back, her eyes searching my face in an attempt to mine my tendency to break down under her scrutiny.
To avoid her inquiring eyes I bent down and drew Chez to me, kissing her on the cheek. “You behave now, okay?”
“Don’t forget to come back for me,” Chesney giggled.
“Would I do that?”
“What time will you pick me up?”
I thought for a minute. “How’s five o’clock?”
“Don’t be late.”
I turned to my mother. “See what I have to put up with.”
“Wait until she reaches thirteen,” my mother said.
“I love you, Daddy,” Chesney said.
“I love you too, baby.”
My mother was still watching me intently. “You sure you don’t want to talk, Carmen?”
Behind her the massive skeletons of hibernating oaks stood aloof, and silent. I shook my head. My mother believed in talking things out. Her approach was that of a Renaissance woman, a mixture of New Age yoga, hugs, and chanting. Right now the oaks were silent. When the season was right they’d flush away sleep and come alive with leaves and blossoms. I was like an oak tree. And it was the season to spring to life. I couldn’t waste time talking when it was time for action.
SIPPING COFFEE in a doughnut shop in lower Manhattan half an hour later, I freed my cell phone from my belt clip to call Milo, my Trini partner in the music store. Almost midday. Milo took his sweet time answering the phone.
“Good morning. Caribbean Music City.”
“Hey, Milo, are you jerking off over there?”
“Blades! So nice of you to remember that we have a business together. Where the hell you is, man? I just called your house. You need to come to the store right away.”
“Can’t, Milo. Something came up.”
“What you mean you can’t? You don’t understand. Some crazy dance-hall singer came in here this morning. Said he heard we been selling bootleg CDs of his music. Said he was coming back with a gun and I better give him all the copies we made and the money we took in off his CDs.”
“Sounds like a shakedown. There’s a Baretta in the office. Next time he comes around ask him why isn’t he hassling the pirates on the sidewalk and then shoot the fucker.”
“Very nice, Blades. If you want to take the business for yourself you can buy me out, you know. You don’t have to set me up to go to jail.”
“Sorry, Milo. I guess I’m in a bad mood.”
“Blades, man, you gotta come here.”
“I’ll see if I can swing around later.”
I hung up, finished my coffee, and left the diner.
SHORTLY AFTER ONE I parked outside Noah’s brownstone on a Harlem hill, a few blocks from City College. Noah and his wife had only moved in a few months ago, having endured two years of construction screwups before the house was finally renovated to suit their expectations.
The result was well worth the wait and wrangling. But Noah, being the hard-ass tyrant to commitment, refused to pay the contractors because they had signed a contract obligating them to finish the work in one year. The matter was now in litigation.
Back in the ’20s the house had been owned by an African-American writer who gained fame during the Harlem Renaissance. One of the reasons Noah bought the place. He got wind that a white couple was about to purchase it from the elderly Jamaican couple pining for their tropical paradise. Noah went to them and urged them to consider the cultural damage selling the house to whites would visit on Harlem. Noah wasn’t always known for his subtlety.
Must’ve all sounded like mumbo jumbo to the poor Jamaican couple. They laughed in Noah’s face and showed no signs of changing their minds until Noah outbid the white couple by $20,000.
The ornate wooden wall trims and moldings had been stripped and redone; a rickety balustrade had been carefully reconstructed. Looked brand-new now. Shiny hardwood floors had been installed and by the time Noah moved his awesome collection of African art into the house it had taken on that crisp, haunted look of a museum.
I trudged up the steps, knocked on the steel door, which had been camouflaged to look like oak, and waited. From down the hill came the sound of animated Harlem commerce on 145th Street, a street flavored with restaurants, clothing stores, real estate offices, a
nd sidewalk vendors who couldn’t find space further downtown, as well as small theater companies struggling to bring humor and creativity to the folks uptown at affordable prices. The Diaspora Now Gallery on the corner of Convent and 145th sold art created by black artists from around the world.
After a few minutes the door opened. Noah stood there dressed in black slacks and a mauve blue sweater; his face was puffed up as if it’d been injected with silicone, his eyes red and blank as the sky before dawn.
We looked at each other without speaking. He twisted his body foolishly, a man in a trance. I stepped into the foyer and for some reason immediately felt as if I was in a church. I looked up at the ceiling expecting to see stained windows. But all I saw were the high white ceilings of Noah’s brownstone.
Noah closed the door and stood leaning against the wall, his hands hanging limp, his body slack and self-contained.
“How’s Donna?”
He lifted his eyes off the floor. “Alive. Though barely.”
“She’s asleep?”
“Drugged would be more accurate.”
“I’m sorry, Noah, but I was worried. I tried calling.”
“You want a drink?”
“No. Some coffee.”
“Too early for coffee. All I got right now is Scotch.”
I watched his face to see if he would chuckle or laugh. He was serious.
“Okay, I’ll have a Scotch.”
I followed him into the ballroom-sized living room, a room so spacious Noah once joked that he didn’t have to rent a theater to do his plays because he could stage them in his living room. Wide bay windows overlooked the street. Drawn thick purple curtains held bright day at bay.
Noah had gotten a head start with the alcohol. He picked up a half-filled glass of whisky off the table, sipped, stared at me a few moments, then walked to an antique table docked against the side wall to fetch a glass. He uncorked the whisky bottle and quarter-filled my glass. I took one short sip. The alcohol set my empty stomach aflame. I sat down. Too early to be doing this shit.
“I wish I could take drugs like Donna. I’d rather be sleeping,” Noah said.
I nodded. Blades, this would be a good time to comment that alcohol was a drug.
“I’m not taking this well, am I?” Noah tried to smile.
“Does anybody?”
“I used to think I was tough, Blades.”
“You’re tough.”
“Why Ronan?”
“Have you talked to the police since last night?”
“I haven’t talked to a soul since last night. Not even Donna. I’ve got a thousand messages on my machine. I don’t want to see anybody.”
“Everybody needs comforting, Noah.”
“I don’t want anybody here until Donna is at least able to grieve without throwing up all over herself.”
I took another sip. The room was getting warmer. Noah walked over to the window and pulled the blinds. Sunlight flooded the room. He gulped his whisky and poured another.
“How many of those things have you had today?” I said.
“None of your business.”
“You want Donna to wake up and find you on the floor?”
“Who tells you Donna wants to wake up at all?”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
He looked at me and his eyes popped open wide. “What?”
“What? That’s what I’m asking you.”
“How many people you killed, Blades?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to lie to him.
“In the line of duty,” Noah continued.
“I don’t remember.”
“I never killed anybody. I was shot at. Many times. Pulled my gun no more than ten times. Never killed anybody. It’s not that I couldn’t. It just never came to that. You understand.”
“I understand. You’ve told me this already.”
“I just want you to understand.”
“I understand.”
“Well, remember it. Remember I said it today, because it might be the last time I will get to say it and be telling the truth. I swear I’m gonna find the muthafucker who did this and give them a free ride to hell.”
I didn’t say anything. I wished I could say something smart, something rational, something different. Unfortunately I was thinking the same thing.
He turned to face me. “You know what he told me last night?”
“What?”
“We were at the bar. Well, you saw what happened. I was overwhelmed. It was such a shock seeing him there. He didn’t hate me, he said. Never did. I always thought he hated me. Ever since he was a teenager he was fascinated with the Black Panthers. He read all the books: Soul on Ice. Soledad Brother. But he didn’t know the truth. One summer he came back from college and I decided to school him. I told him what I knew about the Panthers. I told him about the good stuff they did and I told him about their fuckups too. I told him about the two Panthers who killed a friend of mine in an ambush. But he didn’t believe me. He laughed at me. Told me I was a pig in those days and was out of touch with the revolution that was going on. I hit him. Shit, Blades, I smacked him so hard I broke his jaw. We never talked again. At least not a polite conversation. And then last night he said he’d forgiven me. He said he missed talking to me.”
“Do you know of any threats against him?”
“He was my son, Blades. But I can’t tell you a thing about his life. Ain’t that a fucking shame? That’s why I gotta find his killer.”
“You’re too damn old to be running around playing detective, big man.”
I set my glass down on the table and got up. I left him sitting there with a dazed look on his face and went out the door.
FOUR
a fter I left Noah’s house, I made a call to someone whose awareness of every ripple in the odious subterranean swamp life of New York City, especially Brooklyn, kept him one step ahead of the law and his competition; it also made him a valuable informant on the lifestyles of the criminally famous. Except for pickpockets and petty thugs, Toni Monday could connect the dots to almost any criminal activity of substance in Brooklyn. He wasn’t home and I left my cell phone number.
Walking into my music store on Nostrand Avenue shortly after three that day, I was greeted by the bounce and rattle of kettle drums propelling the hypnotic beat of a popular Tuk song, background music to the activity in the store. Good to see so many customers buying rather than loitering. Over the years we’ve seen our share of loiterers, mostly men hanging out, listening to music and nothing more.
When I joined the NYPD in 1988, my partner, Leroy James, was a caretaker at the academy. Out of our love for calypso music—I grew up listening to it in my grandmother’s house—we developed a business idea. Five years later we opened Caribbean Music City selling tapes, CDs, and records, losing so much money the first year we almost closed. Later our product line expanded to include video-tapes, DVDs, and cell phones. Today we made a meager profit, allowing us to hire two part-time assistants who rotated days and weekends.
After observing a few transactions for CDs and DVDs I walked into the office to find Leroy—who I affectionately call Milo—sifting through bills, a pile of catalogs on the desk. Because of the club, I was spending less time at the music store, but Milo was real cool about it, never hassling me.
He looked up when I came in. “You late, man.”
“Late for what?”
“I called the cops. When that guy showed up again they arrested him.”
“See, I knew you could handle it.”
“Looks like I handling everything around here now, right?”
“And doing a right good job.”
“That’s not how it was supposed to be.”
“What’s bothering you, man?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay then, I’m gone.”
“Where you going?”
“I got some business to take care of.”
“Nothing to do with th
is business, I bet.”
“Personal.”
“We don’t get to hang out, man. Shit. I used to see you at the store every day. Now if I see you twice a week I’m lucky.”
“Have you read the newspaper today?”
“Not yet. Why?”
“Remember my friend Noah?”
“Yeah, the professor?”
“Somebody killed his son last night. Shot him in the head. I was there.”
Milo was silent, just looking at me. “That’s fucked up.”
“Listen, I got things to do. We’ll talk later.”
“Yeah. Be cool.”
DINNER THAT EVENING was nothing special; just some lentil soup and falafel I’d picked up on my way home from a Middle Eastern restaurant. River Paris showed up on my doorstep as I was finishing. There was a seductive glow to her smile as I stared at her standing under the outdoor light affixed above the door.
She was dressed in her trademark leather; rich cream pants and short black jacket, her smoldering purple lips threatening to ignite the rest of her. She waved a bottle under my nose.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Blades, I’m hurt,” she cooed. “I have a very expensive bottle of wine here. And no, it didn’t come from your collection at the club. Do you wanna have a drink with me?”
She eased past me into the house. I closed the door, following her into the living room. She set her bag down on the sofa and unbuttoned her jacket.
I said, “This is not a good time, River.”
She smiled. “Don’t look so scared, Blades. I’m here as a friend. That’s all.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t drink right now. I’ve got some things to think about. Alcohol’s only gonna mess me up. I need my mind to be clear.”
“I saw the newspaper. Why didn’t you tell me last night?”
“I didn’t want to burden you.”
“When is Anais coming back?”
Love and Death in Brooklyn Page 3